16 . PROF I LéS THE NEW YORKER THE BR.OWN DER.BY AND THE BEE T HE ninth paragraph of a Syra- cuse dispatch to the World, dated September 29, 1 922, was: "At eleven o'clock last night Al Smith was a beaten man." Al Smith, political product of the streets shadowed by Brooklyn Bridge and Tammany's favorite son, was de- fying the Boss. "As the midnight hour approached," ran the dispatch, "man after man crossed the threshold of the unpreten- tious headquarters in the Onondaga Hotel and implored Smith to forget principle and embrace expediency. 'I'm damned if I will,' repeatedly replied the ex-Governor. '1 may be licked, but I will lick Hearst, too, if it is the last act of my life.' Down in the lobby . . . the Tammany men began to desert 'Our AI.' In their opinion Al was committing the cardinal sin. That was the last straw. They began to say that Al had the swelled head and thought himself bigger than Mur- phy." Well, the fact is, he was. ...J\nd when Murphy died he long had known it. Al Smith saved Tammany and made himself a national figure when he refused to compromise with \V. R. Hearst at Syracuse. Maybe, as Mur- phy's closer friends suggest, Smith was doing what the Boss hoped he would do. Maybe the upstate anti- Hearst bloc organized by Billy Kelly was the secret work of Murphy, who f or strategical reasons pretended to be for Hearst. Politics is full of such diableries. But the surface and sub- surface at Syracuse when the dispatch was sent to the World that night bore no traces that Murphy wanted Smith to do anything more heroic than to compromIse. The dispatch from which these ex- c rpts are taken was written by Charles S. Hand. It will be a long time be- fore any reporter writes a better one, largely for the reason that no reporter for a long time will have any such story to recount. Smith was at the crossroads of his life. In 1918 he was elected Gover- nor, one of the few Democratic sur- vivors of the vote by which the entire nation turned its back on Woodrow \Vïlson when the President was in direst need of the prestige of victory. In 1920 the anti-Wilson sentiment had grown so powerful that Smith's second nomination could not surmount it. So at Syracuse, in 1922, Smith was a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination again and Hearst was a candidate, too. He was a candidate for Governor first, and, if he could not have that, he was a candidate for Senator. Why this fairly cynical pub- lisher of great ability, this editor who shows by the contemptuous courage of A l Smith inconsistency, how great an expert he is on American boobology-why Hearst has ever wanted an office is one of the psychologic l mysteries of this century. But he has wanted many- and held one. Smith knew that a nomination for Hearst meant turning Tammany over to the dictation of the editor. He also knew that, if he refused to com- promise with Hearst and were nomi- nated hims 1 f, he might be beaten again; that a second defeat would end his political leadership and form a foundation for that very rule of Tam- many by Hearst which Smith had set himself to prevent. The que;:,tion be- fore Smi th was: "Can I prove myself stronger than all the rules of the game of politics?" "I think I can," he answered him- self. And he did. Therefore, when Mayor Hylan, at the head of the Hearst forces, com- pelled the Tammany leaders to urge Smith to make a deal with Hearst, he assumed the poetic position of Fitz- James and said in the hearing of the assembled press: " M b . , b . I ay e It won t e me. can stand it. But it won't be Hearst." For Hearst had accused Smith in his papers of neglecting food standards in the city at the expense of the tenement children, and that was a charge this rough-and-tumble politIcian from the Bowery resented with every decent impulse in him. He knew as well as another the playful Hearst practIce of calling a political opponent every kind of name, making every sort of charge, and forgetting them when the campaign was over, particularly if Hearst had lost the battle. He knew as well as another that the practice of American politics everywhere is to make friendly bed this year with the bitter enemies of last year. Such beds Smith himself made. Many charges he has forgotten. But this one- The compromisers suggested that Smith and Hearst divide the nomina- tions, either taking the governorship, the other running for senator. I quote again from Hand's dispatch: " 'Why hold hard feelings against Hearst?' a friend asked persuasively. 'He is willing to let bygones be by- gones. Why can't you do the same?' "'That fellow!' ..AJ replied, tears \-velling in his eyes. 'Hearst said that I killed the babies by allowing impure milk to come into New York City- me, the father of six children. And he knows it was a damnable lie. Re- member those pictures of the forlorn children and the poverty-strIcken mothers? God!... If they want Hearst to run with me, I'm through." That was at eleven o'clock Two hours later Hylan was on his way back